At Milan and Paris Fashion Week, menswear is taking a surrealist spin

Fashion has been a lot of fun the past couple of seasons. Designers have been using technique and technology to create strange, surreal, and arresting optical illusions. You might remember Loewe’s pixelated hoodie from last summer, which looked like it had jumped out of Minecraft, or Jordanluca’s viral (and now sold-out) ‘pee-stained’ jeans from the autumn/winter 2023 collection, which featured a stonewash stain on the crotch. One of Louis Vuitton’s statement pieces for the same season was the Illusion ankle boot, hand-painted to look like black pumps worn with a ribbed white sock.  

The trend continued through to the spring/summer 2024 menswear and womenswear shows. At Comme des Garçons Homme Plus, designer Rei Kawakubo presented suit jackets stamped with imagery of layers of unbuttoned shirts and more jackets. Over at Acne Studios, jeans were printed with keychains that looked like they were dangling from the waist, while Ottolinger printed a shirt, tie, and blazer on a bodysuit. Vaquera’s panty skirt has already been the subject of a very New York social experiment. 

What’s with all the trickery, you ask? The term is trompe l’oeil, French for ‘trick the eye’, and it’s exactly what these clothes do. A trend that originated in the art world, it was popularised in 1927 by designer Elsa Schiaparelli, who wove a two-dimensional collar into a boxy knit sweater, creating the illusion of a pussy-bow blouse. 

Over the years, countless designers including André Courrèges, Jean Paul Gaultier, Jeremy Scott at Moschino, Glenn Martens at Y/Project, Di Petsa, and Mathieu Blazy at Bottega Veneta have indulged in their love for the technique in all kinds of ways, playing with perspective and proportions. Now, trompe l’oeil has become a mainstay in fashion, so much so that at the Prada spring 2025 menswear show, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons presented a slew of ‘fake’ V-neck cardigans and pullovers on shirts (or was it the shirts that were fake?) and fake ‘belts’ on trousers. From afar, it looked like perfectly normal outerwear layered over a polo-neck tee or button-down. Upon closer inspection, though, you could tell they were single-knit units embellished with decorative buttons, or images of belts printed low on the hips of ’90s boot-cut trousers. 

For Louis Vuitton, musician Pharrell Williams revisited his iteration of the house’s classic Damier check. Appropriately dubbed ‘Damoflage’, this time, the checks appeared to mimic python hide and a map of the world with Africa at its centre. 

From superimposing prints to using unconventional materials, one thing is clear: designers are reminding us to rethink how we perceive things. In a world where everything is not what it seems (hello, deepfakes), a double take might be worth it.